Carbon Accounting Course

A new course in Terrestrial Carbon Accounting for REDD+ practitioners is being offered by the University of California at San Diego in partnership with the Tropical Forest Group and World Wildlife Fund.

Date: August 2013 - Ongoing

The Terrestrial Carbon Accounting Certificate programme is designed to foster global best practices and skills in data acquisition, land-use change detection, emissions factors for terrestrial carbon, mathematics and statistics, sharing and transparency, quality assurance, and the establishment of remote continued learning nodes of terrestrial carbon accounting excellence.

Course participants are trained in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines, with the course applicable to a range of schemes, including voluntary and compliance carbon markets, commodity certification programmes, and bilateral and multilateral cooperation to conserve and restore tropical forests.

The course is recommended for professionals from around the world who are active in the sphere of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+), such as:

Technical professionals

Government and foundation donors

Government representatives

The course was launched in August 2013 in San Diego, California, and is planned to take place again in other locations around the world.

Date: 10-12 June 2013

The multi stakeholder participatory workshop REDD+ MRV – science solution to policy challenge was hosted by the WWF Forest and Climate Initiative, WWF Netherlands and Wageningen University from 10-12 June 2013 in Zeist, The Netherlands.

The purpose of this workshop was to assess the status and development of monitoring approaches in light of the evolving REDD+ needs from different actors such as policy makers, national REDD+ experts, local implementers, donors and the private sector. The workshop involved 31 participants from scientific, public and private stakeholders.

Evolving REDD+ monitoring requirements and challenges from each stakeholder’s perspective were shared among participants through presentations and discussion panels. The most important gaps were identified and led to the development of research priorities with the focus of more effectively linking local and national REDD+ efforts on five themes:

•Monitoring and Measurement

•Reporting and Verification

•Reference levels

•MRV of Safeguards

•Benefit sharing

These issues were also discussed in the context of the outcomes of UNFCCC SBSTA 38 agenda item 4 draft text that was negotiated in parallel.

The workshop output was a roadmap proposed by the working groups on solving the key requirements specified under the five main themes. Recommendations were made on what to do next, how to approach the issues, when to execute actions, and who to involve in the process.

The participants committed to take on the most critical tasks under the leadership of a WWF – WU partnership. This partnership will help to bridge dedicated research, local and national implementation, and the policy and political level that is essential to address the objectives in comprehensive manner. Further communications, including a detailed workshop report and executive summary are being prepared.

Download other workshop output documents

Technical Workshop: Building REDD+ Reference Levels

Date: 28-29 January 2013

WWF and the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) hosted a technical workshop Building REDD+ Reference Levels, at WWF's US headquarters in Washington, D.C., on January 28-29, 2013. The objective of the workshop was to provide an informal opportunity for countries to share their experiences in the development of national and sub-national forest reference levels and to learn from their collective knowledge. Workshop participants included a range of stakeholders from members of national and state governments, civil society organizations, private sector and academia.

During the workshop, participants were invited to highlight major challenges and barriers that they faced in developing their forest reference levels, as well as to share lessons learned and outline technical capacity gaps in their countries.

A report has been produced that presents the key findings of the workshop and highlights some possible pathways forward in light of these findings. This may be downloaded here.

Please see the list of workshop documents available to the right for an overview of the presentations given during the workshop.

Date: February 2011

Unlocking Forest Bonds was a high-level workshop on tropical forest finance held in London in February 2011. The workshop brought together a broad range of experts on tropical forest policy and finance to highlight the specific challenges of using a bond for the conservation and sustainable use of forests, and how those challenges may be overcome.

WWF hosted its second annual Forest Carbon Finance Summit (FCFS) from February 25-27, 2010 in Washington, D.C. Building on the success of last year's event, the Summit brought together 90 thought leaders from the forest carbon finance field to move the conversation on REDD+ forward.